How can we make adaptation to climate change economic growth friendly, which is till now is energy intensive ?

Adaptation to climate change is an important way to deal with adverse impacts of climate change. But are the present adaptation options at the national level among developing countries are economic growth friendly. All the developing countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia. But the question is Are the adaptation at the national level sustainable?

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Most adaptation plans at the National Level at least in India follow a top down approarch. They do not take account of the realities at the ground level.

Another problem is that with the level of uncertainity in climate change, it is very difficult to design adaptation plans. Plans have to be very flexible to take account of uncertainities.

A lot of adaptation is also taking place at the community level. I have my doubts about their long term sustainability as well. But considering that they are resorted to because there is no other option, such communities need institutional support for new livelihood options

Adaptation in Italy is still a long way to come. Businesses are very far behind what should be needed, while public administrations...well, I'd just say that any evaluation of public administrations attitudes and behaviors as far as environmental policy is concerned is N.A., Not Applicable.

The economic crisis is not having so good an impact on economic behaviors as expected. Businesses are not taking the road to innovation, going low in energy intensity, playing ahead of the likely outcomes of the Copenhagen Summit. Too difficult and risky a way. Much easier to get rid of all environmental concerns and controls, and play it down. After all, when a whole lot of businesses do break the rules about environment protection, and enforcing the rules might cause businesses lay off workers...what do you think is going to happen?

Public administrations - towns, cities, counties, regions, up to the State - are not the first to go environment-friendly, for sure. They are out of money, and do play it down.

Archita You pointed out an important issue of policy decisions under uncertain climate change. For India although climate change projections are available at national and regional level, they are not available at the local level which i think will be most important from planning point of view. Unless we wont be able to know what is happening at the local climate policy decision will be difficult. However we may resort to no regret- adaptation options and flexible planning to deal with uncertainty.

I'm just back from a mtg of the National (Australian) Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility for Infrastructure and Settlements at the Uni of New South Wales. It's a group of people who are new researchers in the field, mostly PhD's and PhD canidiates plus a few supervising professors. Over the 3 days we discussed each others work across a very wide field - construction, engineering, law, water management, coastal management, transport, economics, culture, govt policy and health (medical/ disease issues). Economics paid a large part of our discussions, too large a part really. What disturbed me most was that there was absolutrely no discussion about the impacts of CC on individual psychology and community well being. The discrepancy between planned adaptation measures and the apparent increasing rate of CC towards higher and more extremes of the IPCC projections seems a certain indicator that things won't have much real impetus to change until the seas invade island nations and destroy settlements and infrastructure in places such as the E coast of Australia and the USA. When the strips of coastal high rise and multi-million dollar homes begin to fall into the sea, or fail to function because sewerage sytstems back up constantly etc then there will be an urgent impetus for action and commitment by the people who can influence decision makers. While it would be great to see a more pro-active response it seems most people will continue to do what they've always done until changes are forced on them by rapidly altering ie. devastating circumstances.

Adverse impact of climate change cannot be doine with overnight, neither can be achieved only through dialogues. It has to be dealt in by Civil society at grassroot.For example areas need to be identified and adopted and special resource to keep track of it to make it sustainable. A sustainable city thus formed can help in economic prosperity.